Two Aliens in a Parallel Universe
by MiroTheCat
Summary: Instead of falling into the hands of Thanos's lot when he falls off the Bifrost, Loki lands in a parallel universe accompanied by a stowaway who got stuck to his cape somewhere in space.
1. Chapter 1

_My first crossover; I don't normally read or write them, but a loyal reader asked for it to help their IW-related trauma so I agreed to give it a try. I'll admit, the premise I came up with for it is pretty fun to play with so far._

_Loki is in fact the Asgardian equivalent of 16. I've seen two separate posts where people did the math. Explains a lot, doesn't it?_

* * *

Crash landing in a tree in a city park was not what Loki had been planning on when he allowed himself to fall from the Bifrost. Actually, he hadn't been planning on anything seeing as he didn't expect to survive it. But yet here he was, awkwardly sprawled among a handful of branches that he'd taken down with him, with no worse injuries than a split lip and a fractured wrist.

Well then. What realm was this, anyhow? First order of business, camouflage. Then exploring. A loose-fitting shirt and trousers and a jacket that toed the line between a robe and a trench coat seemed like a suitably generic outfit to tide him over until he got his bearings.

The clothing change seemed to have been not a minute too soon, as he was interrupted while healing his injuries by the approach of a man in maroon robes.

"You fall off your broom?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Don't be cute with me young man. We got a report of a person falling out of the sky and you're at the scene healing yourself by magic."

He supposed he might as well see how this one played out, although he still wasn't quite certain what the man meant about falling from a broom. "I'm sorry to have inconvenienced you, sir."

"Inconvenienced—what were you even doing flying around London? Are you even of age?"

London was a city in Midgard, but Midgard having magic was news to Loki. Which meant he had no clue how old one had to be to get their flying license, assuming that was what the man was implying. "I'm…sixteen?"

"Thought you'd sneak off on your broom instead of getting on the train to school then, did you?"

Well that at least he had an answer to. "No sir. I don't attend school. I've always had private tutors."

For a minute the man's expression had him thinking that might have been the wrong answer. Surely it was permitted to have tutors instead of attending school? But after a beat the man huffed something under his breath of which Loki only caught the word "privileged" and his spirits lifted. He could handle being taken for wealthy and spoiled, in fact that might even be for the best; he was a prince after all and that could explain away his knowing things that an ordinary boy his age might not.

"Where are your parents? Surely they didn't approve this stunt of yours."

"Dead."

"Oh. Um. Guardians?"

"Don't have any." Not anymore, anyway. Fuck Odin and his manipulative fake love.

"Well, I'd best take you to the Ministry then, and they'll get you sorted out. Someone to look after you until you're of age and all that." The man glanced around him shiftily before pulling a thin wooden rod from his pocket. A wand, really? They would send someone to investigate who was so weak a sorcerer as to require an item to channel his power? Even Thor could control his storms without the aid of Mjolnir even if he did still need it for advanced work. "Say, is that your cloak up there?"

Loki looked up. His cloak was indeed still hanging from a branch high in the tree. "…Yes."

"Accio cloak!" The cloak came down with a…squeak?

Spoken spells, too? Yikes. "Thank you." He swung the cloak back around his shoulders and out tumbled an indignant little black ball of fur.

"You brought your cat along?"

First of all, that was definitely a juvenile flerken.

"Well, I suppose he's all the family you've got left, huh?"

"Yeah." Loki cautiously picked up the creature, hoping he wasn't about to get eaten. "Can't exactly leave the little guy behind, can I."

"No you can't. Let's get you and—what's his name?— to the Ministry."

Loki eyed the tiny black hole chewing on his hair. "…Stowaway."


	2. Chapter 2

"So Bergman tells me you're recently orphaned, no wand, no luggage, just you and your cat?" The Ministry wizard took a swig of the tea that his teapot had just poured of its own accord and began coughing when it evidently scalded his mouth.

"Yes sir."

"Right. Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork…You don't mind if I use my new quick quotes quill, do you? My eyes have gone crossed from the mountain of papers I had to go through for the Winslow hearing this morning. I'm sure you've been reading all about that in the Prophet."

"That's quite alright."

"Thank Merlin." He whipped out a large acid green quill and set it on the roll of parchment in front of him, where it stood upright and quivering. "Name?"

"Loki Laufeyson."

"Age?"

"Sixteen."

"Birthdate?"

"December 17."

"Place of birth?"

"Útgarðar."

"Where's that, Norway?"

"…Yes."

"Living family? Godparents?"

"None."

"I'm told you were home schooled until now?"

"Yes."

* * *

"…And finally, I've just had an owl from the Ministry. We will have a Loke Larson joining us as a sixth year. His parents chose to home school him up until their recent passing, so please make yourselves available if he needs help catching up on any topics they may have failed to cover adequately. Yes, Minerva?"

"Will we be including him in the Sorting Ceremony with the first years tonight?"

"No, I don't think so. Someone from the Ministry is taking him shopping today and then delivering him directly to us, so we will sort him whenever he gets here. Oh, and also, whoever ends up as his head of house will be serving as his interim guardian while the Ministry tracks down his sole living relative. Last known she was in a convent somewhere, and it seems that today is his birthday so he will be in need of a guardian for a full year."

"He's not the son of Sam Larson who was in my year, is he?" Charity asked, concerned.

"No, the family immigrated from Norway. If there's nothing else, you may all go finish up your last minute preparations before the Welcome Feast."

* * *

Literally everybody used wands. For everything. It was horrifying. And they expected him to buy one of his own?

"Go on then, give it a wave." Loki flicked the stick half-heartedly. Unsurprisingly, nothing happened.

"Here, try this one." Nope. The wands were dead wood to him, built for a completely different type of magic than his.

The mounting pile of discarded wands did not seem to be deterring the wand maker in the slightest, and Loki concluded that he was just going to have to fake it. Perhaps one of these would be suitable to turn into a protective talisman with the addition of a few runes if he was going to be required to carry one around all the time anyway.

This one would do. Ash, same as Yggdrasil, and a core of dragon heartstring. It had some decoration but left adequate space to carve runes without their addition being too obvious. This would do nicely. Loki made all the lamps flicker dramatically when he raised it, hoping that was satisfactory.

"I think this one likes me."

"It feels good?" The wand maker didn't seem hugely enthusiastic. "I have hundreds more. You don't need to settle for one that isn't a perfect fit."

"No, I like it. It feels very natural in my hand." A compulsion spell tingled at Loki's fingertips. This needed to be over with.

"Alright." The man backed down, although he still lacked enthusiasm. "Billed to the scholarship fund, correct?"

The apothecary at least was interesting. Loki was eager to stock up on supplies, but the Ministry witch dragged him away from the herbs with a stern "Scholarship only covers the items on your school list. Come along now."

Yeah, that wasn't going to do at all. Loki left a double with her and returned to his own shopping wearing a borrowed appearance. He'd just conjure his own gold coins.

* * *

"Ah, perfect timing. Thank you Mary." The Ministry witch nodded curtly. "And how are you, young man? Welcome to Hogwarts. I'm Professor Dumbledore, the headmaster."

"I'm well, pleasure to meet you sir." Loki smiled sweetly and shook the man's hand. Well was an exaggeration; his escort's teleportation spell had left him somewhat motion sick and regretting not insisting on handling his own teleportation. The fresh air on the walk from the gates up to the castle had helped some, but his stomach was still not yet fully recovered.

"Leave your trunk here, if you please, and one of our house elves will take it to your dormitory as soon as we assign you to one."

"You have elves working for you?" Not Dark ones, he hoped. Perhaps this was where they had fled to after their defeat?

"Hundreds. Excellent at their jobs; we couldn't function without them. Now, let's get you sorted. I don't know how much you know about our school—"

"Next to nothing, I'm afraid."

"That's quite alright. We sort our students into four houses, named after our four founders. Each house has its own dormitories, common room, table in the great hall, and quidditch team, and you attend classes with your housemates. The houses also compete to have the most house points at the end of the year, with points being earned in class and on the quidditch pitch and lost for rule breaking."

O…kay. Whatever quidditch was. Asking would probably blow his cover. "Alright. And which one will I be in?"

"We're about to find out!" The old man steered him into an empty classroom. "If you'll just take a seat here, this hat is enchanted to see into your head and decide where you'll best fit."

That did not sound like fun. Loki didn't like mind readers very much. Also, what the actual fuck. Silently he thanked Amora and her lack of boundaries for teaching him to shield his mind.

"I doubt that your head is truly empty."

Was the scrap heap on his head seriously talking to him?

"Funny thing, I cannot detect your magic and yet it is clearly there for you to be able to Occlude your mind so thoroughly that I cannot sense even that."

Well that was interesting. And possibly useful.

Stowaway hopped up on his shoulder and sunk claws and teeth into a flap of the tattered brim.

"Ouch! Call off your familiar!"

Loki decided to try something. "No." He thought at it. "Stop wasting my time or I'll tell her to do much much worse."

"Got somewhere better to be?"

"As if I'd confide in you."

"Clever, secretive, and willing to make threats to get your way. You might as well go to SLYTHERIN!"

* * *

_Uh. You probably should not use quick quotes quills to fill out official paperwork. Just saying..._


	3. Chapter 3

"Ah, Mr. Flint. Mr. Larson here is transferring into the sixth year class and has just been sorted into Slytherin. Please bring him with you to the Great Hall."

"Will do, professor." The boy turned to Loki. "Marcus. Slytherin house Quidditch captain. You play?"

Definitely a sport. Loki shook his hand politely. "Loki. And no, I'm not much of an athlete. Big deal around here?"

"Oh yeah. The whole school turns out for matches. How come you're transferring in so late?"

"My parents died over the summer. They were home schooling me. Can we not talk about it?"

"Yeah, of course." Two more boys fell in next to them as they approached the table decorated in Slytherin green. "Look fellows, we got a transfer student. This is Loke Larson, he's joining my year."

"I'd advise against taking studying advice from Flint." The older one recommended. "Terence Higgs, by the way."

"And I'm Adrian Pucey. We're both on the Quidditch team with Marcus. Are you trying out?"

"I don't think so, no." They settled at the table, Loki on one side of Marcus and his two teammates on the other. "So, who and what do I need to know?"

"Dumbledore is kind of dotty and very biased towards Gryffindor, which was his old house."

Loki nodded. "He did seem…strange."

"That's an understatement. Have you met any of the other teachers?"

"Not yet. There was just enough time to sort me and choose my electives."

"Okay. In all black there is Professor Snape, our head of house. He's very strict but does favor us quite a bit. He teaches potions. The really short one is Flitwick, the charms professor. Nice enough, as long as you don't screw around too much. Vector is in the grey robes, teaches Arithmancy. Never took her classes myself, but she lost her shite with Peregrine last term over a bit of harmless fun with her chalk and nearly cost us the quidditch cup. Big one that just came in is the groundskeeper, Hagrid. Doesn't seem to like us a whole lot, which is odd considering rumor has it he was a Slytherin himself until he got expelled. The bloke with the missing hand is Kettleburn, who teaches Care of Magical Creatures. Way past his prime, frankly."

"Marcus is still mad about Kettleburn making him scrub out kennels in detention last term." The girl on Loki's other side explained. "At least he _had_ a prime, unlike some teachers. Trelawney for one."

"Which one is that?"

"Divination. She's not here, never really comes down out of her tower."

"So signing up for Divination was a mistake then?"

"Massive mistake."

"It's not that bad, Addie." Terence protested. "She's weird, sure, but the theory is interesting."

Addie rolled her eyes. "My brother the seer."

"If you'd rather I not warn you about Shunpike…"

"You wouldn't. You don't want Slimepike near your baby sister any more than I do."

The hall went quiet, cutting off the siblings' bickering. A teacher had brought a crowd of children in and was gathering them in front of that obnoxious mind-reading hat.

"The first year students are sorted in front of the school?" Loki asked Marcus softly. It seemed a bit cruel to put them in the spotlight like that; they looked terrified.

"Yeah. Whole ceremony. In a second the sorting hat will start singing. Ah, there it goes."

Well. Singing it was. Loki supposed the song was at least somewhat informative. Being able to make inferences about a person based on the color of their uniform wasn't a bad thing.

Maybe. As the actual sorting began, Loki noticed that the other houses and even many of the teachers seemed to dislike Slytherin. More impersonation of students from other houses then anticipated might be necessary to get people to tell him things.

The hall seemed very excited about one child in particular. Loki leaned over to Addie. "Why is everyone so interested in this one?"

"Because it's Harry Potter!" Well, that didn't help at all, but Loki got the sense that that was information he shouldn't admit to not having.

Thankfully, one of the girls who had already been sorted seemed not to know either. "Yeah, but who is he?"

Another first year girl gave her a scathing look. "What are you, a mudblood?"

Yup, definitely a good thing someone else had asked.

"He's the savior of the wizarding world. Supposedly." Addie explained. "The Dark Lord tried to kill him as a baby but failed and was never seen again. Check the library if you want to know more; it's in loads of books."

Right then. Savior of the world. Dark Lord. This was all very interesting. He should probably make a trip to the library himself. More pressingly…he was being _licked by a tentacle_. He shot the hungry flerken in his lap a warning look. In proper feline fashion, Stowaway did not look the least bit ashamed.


	4. Chapter 4

Faking a type of magic that was quite different than his own and about which he knew very little was hard work.

So was sharing a dormitory with Stan Shunpike, for that matter. The dolt's only redeeming quality was that he was such a pathological liar that nobody believed anything he said.

Which was a very good thing considering Loki had not been aware that it was supposed to be impossible to teleport inside the school. Rude, yes—he hadn't seen other people doing it so he mostly refrained from it himself—but not literally _impossible_.

All Loki had wanted to do was get through the Arithmancy homework before the quiddich team got back from practice. And maybe, since they were working on the homework together anyway, see whether either of the sixth year Slytherin prefects knew who the Gryffindor prefect was that had tried to take points off him for messing with a suit of armor. (Tried being the operative word; Loki had conjured a bucket of water to dump over his head, which the prefect had blamed on the resident poltergeist and been distracted by shouting at thin air.) Unfortunately, he had been cornered in the dormitory by Stan while trying to extract a quill from underneath a napping Stowaway.

"So, got a girlfriend, Loke? Can I see pictures?"

_Here we go_. "I do not."

Stan shuffled closer with a conspiratorial leer. "What do you think of the girls in our year?"

"They all seem nice enough."

Stan snorted. "Most of them are stuck up bitches, you'll see. You can do all the favors in the world for them and they still won't give you the time of day. Especially watch out with the Rosier twins, they may be hot but Gwen's psycho. Still, a threesome with hot twins might be worth the cost of a love potion though, you know?"

"I prefer my partners willing." Loki made a mental note to ask Tegan about the story behind that once he successfully made it to the common room. Slimepike indeed; Addison's nickname for the other boy was spot on.

"That's what the love potion's for. Once they've had a taste of me they'll be sorry they snubbed me all this time. I'm so nice to them, I hold doors and tell them they look good and I carried Addison's books back from the library—"

Loki didn't hear the rest of the rant, as he teleported himself to the hallway just outside the common room with quill and books in hand, manners be damned.

"Took you a while." Andrew and Tegan shifted their books to make room for Loki between them as he came in.

"My cat was reluctant to relinquish my spare quills, and then Stan thought I needed to hear his thoughts on women."

"Oh Merlin." Gemma made a face. "If I weren't a prefect…"

"…you'd take a leaf out of Gwen's book and concuss him with a broomstick." Rhys grinned and patted his girlfriend's hand. "We know."

"…which, as prefects, Gemma and I would like to go on record as saying we definitely didn't see happen and is pure hearsay." Andrew explained to Loki, unable to fully suppress a smirk.

"Of course. It's only responsible to give the benefit of the doubt, which not all of the prefects here seem to do. Do you happen to know who your rather overenthusiastic Gryffindor counterpart is? The ginger fellow."

"That's got to have been Weasley." Gemma rolled her eyes. "He's only just been made prefect this year and thinks he's the bee's knees. Was he bothering you?"

"He took offense to me examining a suit of armor. Luckily, Peeves came to my rescue with a bucket of water." Loki waved it off. "Did anyone get good notes on what Vector was saying about the power of seven? It's a little fuzzy to me."

* * *

By the next morning, it was clear that allowing Stan to see him teleport had been a Bad Idea. Breakfast had started with the same first year who had asked Addison who Harry Potter was on the first night coming up to him to ask if it was really true that he could "apparate" inside the school.

"Um. Huh?" Loki was completely caught off guard.

"Of course not." Adrian came to his rescue. "Nobody can apparate inside the grounds. Besides, he's not 17 yet, are you?"

"No. No, I'm not."

"Yeah, you gotta be 17 to get your license. Where'd you hear that?"

"One of the older boys, Shunpike."

"Oh, don't listen to him. Ever, really. He'll say anything if it gets him two seconds of attention."

"Loke, I hear you can apparate already!" Marcus clapped him on the back, laughing, as he sat down.

Loki groaned.

"Slimepike's just mad you escaped him." Addison dropped Stowaway in his lap. "By the way, your cat somehow got shut inside Asha's trunk."

"Thank you for finding her." Loki passed the flerken a piece of bacon. That was interesting; it seemed that the school was supposed to be teleportation-proof but neither he nor Stowaway were hampered by it at all. Powers with an entirely different basis, he supposed. Which meant they might be immune to all such things.

That could be fun.

* * *

_I disappeared because I moved and was tied up with that. Moving sucks. But now that I'm largely settled in...I'll be writing this as I reread the first book to follow along with its events. Buckle up, kids._


End file.
